Gas turbines are continuously being modified to provide increased efficiency and performance. These modifications include the ability to operate at higher temperatures and under harsher conditions, which often requires material modifications and/or coatings to protect components from such temperatures and conditions. As more modifications are introduced, additional challenges are realized.
One modification to increase performance and efficiency involves forming gas turbine components, such as, but not limited to, shrouds, turbine struts, nozzles/vanes, combustion liners, buckets/blades, shroud rings, exhaust ducts, augmentation liners, and jet exhaust nozzles from a ceramic matrix composite (CMC). CMC gas turbine components may be formed from plies of CMC material. However, CMC material is expensive, and paring sheets of CMC material to a required shape for a ply results in the production of significant amounts of CMC scrap. In addition, the paring process may introduce defects into the ply, and may require multiple paring steps to achieve a sufficiently precise conformation.